


Ferns

by BlueIris4



Series: Ferns and Daisies [1]
Category: Lewis (TV)
Genre: Divorce, Drabble Sequence, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 06:46:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5447027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueIris4/pseuds/BlueIris4
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jean Innocent leaves her husband, and finds something unexpected.</p><p>A story in 14 drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ferns

**Author's Note:**

> With many, many thanks to Owlbsurfinbird, who suggested I give drabbles a try, and then was a very kind and encouraging beta. Thank you.

I –

“Where’s Mr Innocent, then?”

“Andrew? He had to work.”

The same old phrase. She hasn’t noticed how often she makes excuses, until the look on Laura’s face pulls her up short. Not quite _bad luck_ and not quite _pull the other one_ , but somewhere in between. Jean tosses back a vodka tonic and braces herself for a row when she gets home.

They don’t row. She starts, “Where were you?” and he finishes, “Jean. Come on.”

Six words and it’s the longest conversation they’ve had in weeks.

“It was my fucking farewell do.”

The next day she calls her lawyer.

 

II –

“You’ll stay with me.”

Jean thinks about protesting. She can’t impose like that – this could get messy, it could drag on for months, and Laura’s little more than a colleague, really.

But the other options – her sister, her mother, a hotel – are unappealing, and telling her friends she and Andrew have separated (again) is unthinkable.

“Thanks.”

When she gets back after lunch, someone’s left a spare key on her desk.

Laura’s guest room is decked out in green and white Laura Ashley prints and cotton frills, and there’s the scent of fresh earth and ferns. Jean feels instantly at home.

 

III –

“You don’t have to watch over me.”

Laura blows warm air across her coffee and says, “I’m not.”

Jean plucks at her towelling robe – on loan from Laura until Jean can face going home to fetch her own.

“Doesn’t Robbie…” she starts, and stops. She has no idea how to finish that sentence.

Laura drinks deep; it must scald her tongue. Her eyes are blank as icebergs and Jean wonders what that expression means. She wonders if this is Laura hiding, or if that’s only something Jean does.

“Don’t think about Robbie. I don’t.”

And that seems to be that.

 

IV -

The hardest thing is telling Chris, and hearing silence.

He comes to Oxford over Easter – stays with friends, but lounges all weekend in Laura’s kitchen, listening to the radio and peeling potatoes. Robbie, James and Lizzie come round for a roast, they joke about crime and corpses, and Jean realises partway through the meal that she’s happy.

Chris doesn’t say much – he never did, really – but his eyes are soft when he looks at her, and he looks older than he did at Christmas.

“He knew it was coming,” Laura says afterwards.

Everyone did.

It doesn’t sting like it should.

 

V -

“Was it always…?”

The question is born of too much wine. Most days, they don’t talk about anything personal. They talk about dishes and laundry, whose turn it is to cook, who’s paying the gas bill. They’re roommates, not friends.

Something’s different tonight.

“No, not always.”

She’s almost sure. Memory can be slippery as mercury.

“What changed?”

_I worked such long hours._

_Our son left home._

Both good answers, but the real question isn’t, _when did you stop loving him?_ It’s, _did you ever?_

“It’s not your fault,” Laura says into the silence.

One day (not today), Jean believes her.

 

VI –

In the end, it’s more civilised than Jean ever expected. Andrew takes the job in Suffolk, and Jean doesn’t take the transfer, and they sell the house and divide the assets and it’s over as quietly as it began.

When the papers are signed, she begins to think about finding her own flat. Nothing flashy, just somewhere to call home.  

Only the funny thing is, when she imagines a place of her own, it’s green flowers on white linen, and frilly white curtains, and the sound of the clarinet.

Laura says, “There’s no rush to move, is there?”

There isn’t.

 

VII -

Laura spends a lot of time in the garden, digging and pruning and wrestling back bindweed. It’s back-breaking work.

“Can I help?”

Laura looks up from tying back a vagrant rose. Her hair is plastered to her forehead with sweat.

“If you like. Don’t feel obliged.”

“I don’t know much about gardens.”

“Not much to it. Just helping things grow.”

Which is not exactly helpful advice, and Jean says so.

Laura laughs. “You could weed out the daisies.”

Jean stares at the tiny yellow flowers fighting for sunlight, and suddenly she can’t hold back tears.

“You should leave the daisies.”

 

VIII –

Dinner is quiet as always. Laura’s pen is slashing across an article about the new forensic odontology database and Jean is meant to be reviewing the quarterly budget. But the numbers have blurred together, and for all she knows she could be approving an allocation for crocodile wrangling in the Isis.

“I’m sorry I’m not very entertaining.”

Laura’s pen stills, then clunks down. Jean wishes she hadn’t said anything.

“You’re more lively than most people I meet.”

Jean wonders if she’s meant to laugh. Tough to tell with Laura.  

“Does it bother you? All those bodies?”

“I like the quiet.”

 

IX –

She’s been staying in Laura’s guest room for exactly fourteen months and three days when it happens.

Laura’s cleaning behind the toilet (totally unnecessary to Jean’s eyes), and she’s wearing yellow rubber gloves and scungy track pants and a stained old Gresham College Boat Club t-shirt (“I coxed,” Laura says, expression wry.)

“Pass me the sponge, would you?” Laura says, and smiles.

And it’s nothing – it’s _nothing_ – there’s no reason for Jean to feel the bottom of her stomach fall away.

“You all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

Jean’s fingers tremble.

“I’m fine,” she says, and flees.

 

X –

What she’s seen is Marianne. She remembers turning eighteen, and arriving in Oxford, and friendship close as sisterhood, or closer, so close that for one stupid moment she’d thought –

Well, she’d misread things, and Marianne had walked away. They’d never spoken again.

Jean won’t make the same mistake twice.

She scours the net, goes along to some inspections and tries to imagine the soulless flats decked out in Laura Ashley print. In the end she signs on a small place near the canal.

When she tells her, Laura’s eyes go iceberg blank.

“You didn’t have to.”

Jean knows she did.

 

XI –

She paints the walls white, and chooses a white bedspread and white throws.

“It’s very clinical.”

“It feels clean,” Jean says, and Laura can’t argue with that.

It’s the first time in a quarter-century Jean has a space she can call her own, but somehow it doesn’t feel much like hers.

The next time Laura comes round, she brings a potted fern.

“The house feels empty without you,” Laura says instead of farewell, and presses a soft-as-down kiss to Jean’s cheek. Jean shivers.

She puts the fern by her bed, and in the morning the room smells fresh and earthy.

 

XII –

In the end she does what everyone – Laura, Lizzie, Chris, even bloody James Hathaway – have been not-so-subtly suggesting. She talks to a counsellor.

Ellen (ash-blonde, sad eyes, perfect teeth) doesn’t say much, and it’s all textbook responses Jean can recite from rote. Strangely, it still helps to hear them.

But when Laura says, “how’s it going?” Jean opens her mouth to say, “Fine,” and instead what comes out is, “I just don’t know why I’m talking to a stranger when I could be talking to you.”

She holds her breath, only exhales when Laura takes her hand.

“Whenever you like.”

 

XIII -

The kiss, when it happens, is a surprise. Everything afterwards is a revelation.

“Have you done this before?”

Laura smiles, slow and mischievous. “Have you?”

From anyone else, that would mean ‘no’. From Laura, who can tell?

“I’m a fast learner,” Jean says, and Laura laughs against her skin.

Later – warm, sweaty and surprised – Jean says, “ _Oh_. That was…”

“Quite,” Laura says. Emphatically. Then, “Perhaps you could move back?”

Straight away? The jokes’ll be something awful, but that’s not why she says no.

“Not yet. I need my own space for a while.”

Laura nods like this makes perfect sense.

 

XIV –

Two years later, they find a house by the canal, and Laura brings the green and white print, and Jean brings the fern. James and Robbie help with the boxes, and Lizzie and Tony bring wine, and Peterson sends them a foul-smelling orchid and a too-polite card.  

“This is good,” Chris says, meaning possibly the house and possibly the friends and possibly Jean-and-Laura.

“Yes.”

It took Jean years to realise something was wrong, and she’s not sure she’s trusted her own judgement since. But now it takes just moments to see that this thing, here, is good.

And it is.


End file.
